This week’s cultural highlights in our region include experimental theater, indie-punk, modern dance, bossa nova, and more.
The experimental theater company Opera Nouveau will debut its “Tarot Show” at the Mahaiwe in Great Barrington on Saturday at 8pm. The brainchild of performance artist Heather Fisch, “Tarot Show” is a blend of fortune-telling, physical theatre, audience participation, multimedia and live music.
Indie-punk icon Ted Leo will perform a solo show at MASS MoCA in North Adams tonight at 8pm. From his early adventures in the hardcore scene of 1980s New York City, to his much-beloved band Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, to his recent duo project with Aimee Mann called The Both, Leo has distinguished himself as a unique presence in the indie music world: a cerebral punk with an ear for catchy melody.
Contemporary dance-theater ensemble Keigwin + Company performs a program of its state-of-the-art, high-energy movement at PS21 in Chatham tonight and Saturday at 8pm. Named the “Cool Kids of Modern Dance” by Dance Magazine, the troupe will dance to the music of Cyndi Lauper, Stevie Nicks, Annie Lennox, Aretha Franklin, Roy Orbison, Nina Simone, and Jonathan Pratt.
L.A. Dance Project, an exuberant contemporary dance collective hailing from Los Angeles, makes a rare East Coast appearance in its Jacob’s Pillow debut today through Sunday. Benjamin Millepied, former New York City Ballet principal dancer, choreographer for the film “Black Swan,” current director of the Paris Opera Ballet, and perhaps best known as Mr. Natalie Portman, founded L.A. Dance Project in 2012. Also at the Pillow this week is Liz Gerring Dance Company performing its evening-length work, “glacier,” in the Doris Duke Theater.
A program of Brazilian pop-jazz music, featuring the infectious rhythms of bossa nova and headlined by global music singers Cornelius Bates and Vanessa Falabella, will be the featured entertainment in a benefit concert for Animalkind, the cat rescue and adoption center in Hudson, at Club Helsinki Hudson tonight at 8pm.
“Van Gogh’s Ear,” a theatrical concert by the Ensemble for the Romantic Century that explores the connection between the painter’s artistic vision and music of the time, will receive 12 performances at the American Institute for Economic Research in Great Barrington now through Sunday, August 30. The program takes the audience on a journey through the artist’s final years in the south of France. Based on Vincent van Gogh’s letters to his brother Theo, the fully staged production interweaves an original script that dramatizes Van Gogh with live performances of vocal and instrumental works by French composers including César Franck, Gabriel Fauré, Ernest Chausson, and Claude Debussy.
John Guare’s American screwball comedy “His Girl Friday,” an adaptation of Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur's original play “The Front Page” and the screen version “His Girl Friday,” continues its run on the mainstage at Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield through Sunday, August 30.
And if you would indulge me just this once, this Sunday at 4pm at CR10 Arts in Linlithgo, N.Y., just 10 minutes south of Hudson, I will be doing a work-in-progress showing of my latest project, “Rockin’ the Shtetl,” a new multimedia presentation exploring the affinities between 19th-century Eastern European Yiddish musicians and 20th century American folk-rock poets and protest singers. The event will feature narrative, music, and video, and multimedia artist and musician Ryder Cooley will be joining me for the event, this Sunday at 4.
Seth Rogovoy is editor of Berkshire Daily and the Rogovoy Report, available online at rogovoyreport.com